Death Guard v0.2

kyussinchains

Post subject: Re: Death Guard v0.2

Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 8:23 am

Hybrid

Joined: Tue Apr 19, 2011 12:03 pmPosts: 6153Location: Leicester UK

I would always take a pair of grave wardens, as an engagement unit they provide resilience to clipping assaults as well as increased ability to support fire, all for the loss of a couple of autocannon shots.... I think that's a fair trade myself

One day I hope to be a good enough player to fully understand the sublety of what Kyuss just said, because it's full of sound advice. I just don't get it. How are grave wardens better in clipping assaults for example.

I've had a play with the online version of the list and noticed that the havocs upgrade isn't available.

Also I'd like to take the opportunity to say what a great resource the online community is providing in keeping this game alive, and more specifically the army forge creator too. It does a great job of providing people who aren't regularly playing with a simple way to get your hands on the latest (or close to) lists. So a big thanks from me to all involved. You should be proud.

One day I hope to be a good enough player to fully understand the sublety of what Kyuss just said, because it's full of sound advice. I just don't get it. How are grave wardens better in clipping assaults for example.

it's mostly because they have an extra FF attack which makes clipping attacks better if you are engaging in them, and also harder for an opponent to pull off against the terminators as they have a chance of more shots coming back them

Quote:

I've had a play with the online version of the list and noticed that the havocs upgrade isn't available.

if you click on the '8 plague marines' bit, there should be an option to replace it with '5 plague marines, 3 havocs' if not, there's a bug and I'll investigate...

Quote:

Also I'd like to take the opportunity to say what a great resource the online community is providing in keeping this game alive, and more specifically the army forge creator too. It does a great job of providing people who aren't regularly playing with a simple way to get your hands on the latest (or close to) lists. So a big thanks from me to all involved. You should be proud.

I have some slight concerns about Desecrators and Plague Hulks but no direct play experience yet to back that up:

Desecrators - I normally run the EpicUK DG list, so Desecrators feel extremely weak compared to the identically costed EpicUK DG Defiler as they're slower, don't have Infiltrate and have a worse main gun. The sole saving grace in that comparison is that the 15cm move means that you can take more than one of them in a garrisoning formation. Infiltrate would make them much more attractive but would then step on the toes of the Plague Hulk...

Plague Hulks - I'm struggling to see taking them outside of a conversion opportunity. Although they have the Infiltrate that the Desecrators lack, gaining a second MW CC attack in return for losing the majority of the ranged ability of a Desecrator doesn't seem like a good deal, but I'll have to give them some table time and I don't really have a suggestion at the moment.

Now on to units that had an effect in the game.

Plague Towers. I've always struggled with Plague Towers in DG lists. As a transport the crit effect bypasses the DG's biggest strength, the 3+ save and they make already-expensive formations even pricier without any increase in speed. The points drop and speed increase make them a transport that I'd definitely consider taking. However what I'd really been looking forward to was using PTs in a formation of their own.

Unfortunately I think 20cm and 300pt may be too cheap for this use - a pair is (slightly) cheaper than a Repugnant at 600pt to 625pt, 50% better in a firefight and roughly equal in CC, substantially outguns the Repugnant at range and even with the Void Shields of the Repugnant I'd argue that they're more robust with 12DC compared to 7DC + 4VS. Plus they're substantially harder to suppress.

Personally I'd bump them back up to 325pt or maybe even 350pt when in a PT formation. What are other people's experiences of paired Plague Towers?

Fester Titans - losing a shot on the Decay Cannon in return for AT5+ is very welcome! Being used to the Plaguehounds of the EpicUK list, having the Barrage and engages as the sole way to damage AV can be a huge weak point for a Titan. One of the games at Counterattack being a case in point, where a lone Fearless Leman Russ was the last remaining unit from Horatio's Leman Russ Company BTS and being limited to a single barrage hit meant that it just would not die!

Overall - I really like the list. I never really liked the mixed DG Marine + Plague Marine formations of the main NetEA DG list so have used the EpicUK list pretty much exclusively - this version takes some of the nicer elements of the EpicUK list while being different enough to be distinct with the Blight Drones, Plague Tower formations, Chaos Spawn upgrades and the ability to take garrisoning walker formations. An extra shoutout goes to the Invulnerable Save added to all the AVs in return for their slower speed, and the ability to take whole formations of Vindicators, one of my favourite formations back in the days of 1-2 ed SPace Marine.

Steve mentioned he was going to coordinate with the other Chaos list champions that use the tower and harmonize its points. I don't disagree with your points about it being cheap with the speed increase. It has a lot of potential to be exploited I've considered making a list that uses 3. Technically speaking you could pull off a list that uses 6. I don't know that it should go in the war engines section though.

Ok, it's just that as Iron Duke pointed out earlier in the thread, pretty well all other spaceships with 8+ BP are Slow and Steady - so that you can't drop three pie plates in the enemy deployment zone, potentially before they've activated anything.

Anyway, I'll give it a try without Slow and Steady, however I already know what the reaction is likely to be from the other side of the table...

I'll try and get a batrep uploaded tomorrow but here are a few highlights from tonight's 3k game against Epic-UK Iyanden. Some of it is hard to draw solid conclusions from as the dice were a little wacky on both sides of the table...

Plagueship

I picked exactly the right spot for the barrage (in the middle of the Eldar DZ) and was overjoyed to see two Engines of Vaul (Cobra and Serpent) deploy right on the spot, to the extent that one of them would have been under the centre of the first template!

The Plagueship failed to activate on a 2+. The SC re-roll also failed. Of course, by the time it came on in the second turn, everything had advanced away. However I did then get eighteen Zombies who then started heading for the Eldar blitz objective.

Plagueship summary - the Zombies take a lot of the hurt out of getting the barrage location wrong and I'll definitely be trying it again. We automatically assumed they counted as having Teleported and rolled for BMs accordingly. Would this be worth adding? We played it as not having Slow and Steady but I wouldn't mind seeing it added in return for a small points drop (175 to 150?) or getting a bump in points to 200 or even 225. Unless the points go up substantially, I'd also recommend that it's limited to one per force - at 175pt each you could have an additional nine activations on the table by turn three for around 58pt per activation plus some 'free' barrages.

Chaos Spawn

Overall, a cheap way of bulking up a DG Retinue. In this game they only formed ablative wounds and nothing more because every (and I mean every) armour save rolled for a Spawn was a 2. All six of them. That said, every Spawn that failed to save was taking the place of a Plague Marine failing to save so they did their job regardless.

Walkers

These are going to take some getting used to after the Epic UK DG list.

The Desecrator main gun feels surprisingly weedy at AP4/AT6/AA5 compared to AP3/AT5/AA5 for the EUK DG Defiler. 15cm instead of 20cm and no Infiltrate makes them slightly better than a third of the speed in an Engage. On the other hand, Garrisons...

I included a Plague Hulk but it died before having any chance to Engage.

Plague Tower

A single PT was included in the force and did a good job for 300pt. For now I'm likely to be playing them at the 'original' points cost of 325 in their own formation as per the first post, but with 20cm move.

PDF Issues

I noticed a couple of errors in the PDF version:Vindicators keep the 25cm move of the Black Legion version but I believe they should be 20cm in return for the Invulnerable Save?The Blight Drone is listed as INF unit type instead of AV.

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